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Jimmie Johnson is the Michael Schumacher of NASCAR...
15 years ago
FIVE. CONSECUTIVE. CUP. TITLES.
Holy shit. Consecutive titles are hard to do in ANY form of racing, but when your series' schedule is a whopping 36 races, that makes it a much more impressive achievement.
What's more, you can't say that Jimmie Johnson didn't fight for this one. He came into the last race SECOND in points, up against the amazingly strong Denny Hamlin.
Going into this season, I predicted Johnson would falter when they switched back to the spoiler on the cars. Although theoretically it should not have made much of a difference, I know from experience it would have had a profound effect on how to set up the car. At first it seemed like my prediction was right - Johnson's team struggled(for the most part) in the races after the spoiler was brought back, but he came back to challenge strong and prove why he won the previous four titles.
After having a title so close and losing it in the last race, Hamlin's going to be out for blood next season. I severely doubt Johnson will be able to stretch his consecutive title runs any further.
But despite that, I can now predict with certainty that Jimmie Johnson will become the first driver to win 8 Cup titles.
But I doubt he'll manage to become the John Force of NASCAR.
Holy shit. Consecutive titles are hard to do in ANY form of racing, but when your series' schedule is a whopping 36 races, that makes it a much more impressive achievement.
What's more, you can't say that Jimmie Johnson didn't fight for this one. He came into the last race SECOND in points, up against the amazingly strong Denny Hamlin.
Going into this season, I predicted Johnson would falter when they switched back to the spoiler on the cars. Although theoretically it should not have made much of a difference, I know from experience it would have had a profound effect on how to set up the car. At first it seemed like my prediction was right - Johnson's team struggled(for the most part) in the races after the spoiler was brought back, but he came back to challenge strong and prove why he won the previous four titles.
After having a title so close and losing it in the last race, Hamlin's going to be out for blood next season. I severely doubt Johnson will be able to stretch his consecutive title runs any further.
But despite that, I can now predict with certainty that Jimmie Johnson will become the first driver to win 8 Cup titles.
But I doubt he'll manage to become the John Force of NASCAR.
But even more importantly, complaints about Jimmie Johnson's domination should speak loudest about the situation. I feel NASCAR would not knowingly keep helping Johnson win knowing it's causing a lot of fans to abandon NASCAR. The CoT is something they had to do for safety, despite knowing it would be unpopular, and the economy was a factor beyond their control. When you take those into account, even NASCAR(which has not made the best of decisions in recent years, CoT aside) would not actively make things worse.
Hell, they're even looking to improve the Grand-Am Daytona Prototypes in the hopes of getting more attention to that series to help keep the company as profitable as possible.